Added Special Event: Meet the Playwright on Friday, March 24, in a post-show conversation with artistic director Jeff Storer

(Durham, NC) The Homosexuals are here, they’re queer, and they’re sticking around. Due to audience demand and consistently sold-out performances, Manbites Dog Theater is extending this hit play through May 25.

Critics have called The Homosexuals “the best play of the year” (Triangle Arts & Entertainment) and “maybe the very best I’ve seen in all [Manbites Dog’s] years” (The Five Points Star). IndyWeek gives the play four stars, writing that “[playwright Philip] Dawkins’ writing is muscular, and his ear for dialogue serves him and his characters well.” The News & Observer writes that the play’s success is “a tribute to director Jeff Storer’s deep understanding and the cast’s uniform excellence,” while The Five Points Star praises the “extraordinary ensemble acting by several of the Triangle’s most consistently fine actors.”

In honor of the extension, playwright Philip Dawkins will be flying in from Chicago to see the play and participate in a post-show conversation following the performance on Friday, May 24. This special event is free to those who attend that evening’s performance.

The Homosexuals is now playing through May 25, featuring actors Ryan Brock, Chris Burner, Thaddaeus Edwards, Derrick Ivey, Gregor McElvogue, Jeffrey Moore, and Amber Wood. Directed by Manbites Dog’s Artistic Director Jeff Storer.

Tickets

Tickets are $17 Friday-Sunday, $12 Wednesday/Thursday. Student tickets are $5 with ID, and Seniors (62+) and Military receive a $2 discount. Manbites Dog Season Vouchers are accepted for all shows. Thursday, May 2 is a special pay-what-you-can preview. (Door sales only, $5 minimum.)

Order online at http://www.manbitesdogtheater.org or by calling 919.682.3343.

Performances

Further performances run through May 25 on the following schedule:

 – Wednesday, May 15 at 8:15pm

– Thursday, May 16 at 8:15pm

– Friday, May 17 at 8:15pm

– Saturday, May 18 at 8:15pm
– Friday, May 24 at 8:15pm

– Saturday, May 25 at 8:15pm

More Info

Learn more about The Homosexuals online at http://www.manbitesdogtheater.org/thehomosexuals/.

Anyone looking for accommodation in Leipzig for this event can find it here.

Not sure what he is trying to imply, unless he feels some ridiculous need to rewrite history in order to give the impression that he was so intensely amazing at a young age that he was able to walk into his first audition ever and nab a role. However, in the interest of fairness, we must point out that this just isn’t true.

Let’s keep it honest.

My offer still stands. If you want me to publish your remarks in the newsletter VERBATIM as a Letter to the Editor, just e-mail me at RobertM748@aol.com and include your REAL NAME and tell me whether you have any CONNECTION to this production. I’ll publish what you say, and let the newsletter’s and website’s readers decide who’s right and who’s wrong about the many issues raised above.

That is spot on. It’s fine to criticize performance. It’s fine to criticize direction. It’s fine to criticize acting choices. No one argues with a bad review because it’s negative. Negative reviews are as important as positive reviews. I certainly don’t want reviewers to produce nothing but glowing praise, that would be pretty useless. But a cheap joke directed at an actor’s physical appearance really is not helpful to anyone, and it does harm to the theatre community by discouraging non-traditional casting.

I want to see the best performances possible. And if that means a mixed race family in an drawing room comedy or a female Hamlet that’s fine. Naturally non-traditional casting can present some special performance questions that need to be addressed intelligently (and clearly I think they could have been better addressed in this production) but they should be embraced not avoided. When one dings a production for the appearance of the performers rather than the manner that they perform or the way they were directed, a disservice is done to everyone by discouraging companies to take risks.

Byron Woods with the Indy did not belittle an actor’s size as Robert McDowell did. If you go through and read the responses left here, they are almost all to do with one specific aspect of McDowell’s review. Many felt McDowell made an unfair and unjustified attack on one actor’s physical appearance, claiming that his size made him unsuitable for playing the role of Cassius. (It wasn’t even done with tact, but instead made the actor the butt of a joke – or at least that is how it was interpreted by this writer.) The lack of comment on the actor’s performance and focus instead on the actor’s size struck many of us who support the notion of non-traditional casting, to be a shocking and negative choice by this reviewer.

The comments posted here are not about a “bad” review, which as has also been pointed out, was not all “bad”. Bad reviews come with the territory. However, the lack of comments about the Indy review would lend weight to the notion that there was a line crossed by McDowell that Woods didn’t cross.

What I find to be sad is that the decision to write off all of the many hours or work and preparation that this actor put into the role was written off without any comment, other than he was 50 lbs. too heavy for the role. Wow! That is just so unnecessary, rude, and insulting.

It also feeds into the minds of actors, directors, producers and audience members the message that non-traditional casting isn’t worth the trouble, and it is far better to play it safe in casting choices.

What if one of the only reasons the reviewer liked those people mentioned is that they weren’t fat? Wouldn’t that be dumb?

Answer: yes.

For example : content, jovial, relaxed, wise, fertile, productive, satisfied, slow, hefty, substantial, full-bodied, rich, privileged and dull. Basically men who are very unlikely to usurp!

So what if the line was delivered straight? It’s meaning is straight. This is another reason why Mr McDowell’s comments are so offensive. He’s taken a limited interpretation of the text and used it to needlessly fling mud at a performer because of his appearance. Horrible.

What is there to “debate”?

Asking for a simple public apology is apparently a “bridge too far” for this “reviewer”…

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/richard-iii-dna-confirms-bones-belong-to-english-king

You do have to make it work though. What’s wrong is when a production hits a false note. I (speaking only for myself) thought “why did he say that?” Caesar’s line just didn’t make sense to my ears in performance. You could change the text, you could change the motivation of the line. Maybe it’s comic nonesense (think about how they call Tina the llama fat in Napoleon Dynamite for instance). You can do whatever you want. But the way these lines were delivered in this play was very straight. It seemed like no choice had been made about it at all. “We’ll all just ignore this and keep going” seemed to be what was happening, but that doesn’t happen in real life! It shouldn’t happen on stage. It played false.

I’ll note that I’ve seen women play men’s roles quite well (and the reverse), and often with no alteration of the text at all. But in that production it was clear that “these women are playing men in the world of the play.” In the world of the play everyone treated the actors as if they were who they presented. Communication between the actors and the audience was clear. It simply wasn’t clear what was going on in this instance though. Did all the other characters perceive Cassius as thin so Caesar’s line makes sense to them? Was Caesar going senile? Was it a joke? What is going on? And whatever choice you make, if you can’t clearly communicate that choice to the audience, it’s not going to work. Making a definite decision and being clear in performance is important in any theatrical production.

None of this is to defend or justify the snide original statement. As I said at the beginning and end of the previous post, attacking an actor’s physical appearance is just not acceptable. And I repeat it again. It is NOT ACCEPTABLE, and I hope Mr. McDowell understands that. Performance, sure. Direction, sure, but appearance (and this is not the first time he has done this in a review)? That’s just not ok.

You are right that too much attention is paid to this minor detail already.

It was completely unforgivable for Robert W. McDowell to attack an actor for his physical appearance in this way. It’s nothing short of bullying and it shouldn’t be tolerated. I think the real mistake is in the way this reviewer has conducted himself.

Why not just assume Cassius normally looks healthier and bigger than he does when Caesar makes this observation. Why is there an assumption that there is a right and a wrong way to deal with this because it’s a Shakespeare play? I’m always cautious of people putting these works on a pedestal because then we loose a freedom to open our eyes and make them relevant for today. Richard III’s deformities aren’t always physical, Othello isn’t always black, Hermia is sometimes taller than Helena. It’s okay to experiment!

I saw a production where Caesar was an African dictator and that was brilliant. I saw an all female production of this set in a prison and it was brilliant. It was also abridged a good deal (SACRILEGE! haha) There isn’t one way to interpret the text.

This is a show that a lot of people are enjoying and that’s what counts. I think there’s been too much emphasis on a minor detail.

I actually agree that the lines should have been either altered or played differently. Those lines should have been played for ironic or sarcastic effect, but they weren’t (or if they were intended to be so the intent of the actors wasn’t clear in the performance I saw). That created an odd moment for the audience because the words did not match the action of the play.

Yes, of course Caesar is using Cassius’ appearance as a metaphor for his “hunger” for power. But the plain reading of the text is that he is also talking about Cassius’ appearance. Here is the relevant section in full:

CAESAR
Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’ nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
ANTONY
Fear him not, Caesar; he’s not dangerous;
He is a noble Roman and well given.
CAESAR
Would he were fatter! But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius.

He is contrasting the “spare” “lean” Cassius’ to “men that are fat; Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o’nights.” The suggestion is that the fat men don’t sit up all night thinking as the thin Cassius does. It suggests that Cassius is thin BECAUSE he is hungry for power. The failure to address this disconnect, either by altering the lines or their delivery was a mistake. But it was a mistake of the director, not a mistake in casting.

Criticizing the ACTOR because he “doesn’t look like Cassius” is poor criticism and poor writing. It’s a cheap shot. Criticize him for a poor acting performance if you like, but not his appearance.

“William Shakespeare’s plays may be Public Domain, and therefore FREE to produce — and ruthlessly abridge — without paying royalties; but they are deceptively difficult to stage successfully.”

– Hmm, sounds like you’re an expert at it then. Nice use of caps lock. A pompous way to start a review, but let’s battle on…

“Not many community theaters in the Triangle or elsewhere have the capability to pull it off or a talent pool deep enough to communicate the power and poetry in the dialogue of the Immortal Bard’s timeless tragedies. ”

– Right… so unless it’s RSC doing a production then there’s no point bothering? And who honestly refers to Shakespeare as “Immortal Bard” in a conversation? Did you steal that from Isaac Asimov to sound clever? Congratulations on sounding way too obnoxious in that sentence.

“Sadly, such is the case with The Justice Theater Project’s current ill-conceived and at times horribly miscast presentation of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, which was penned in approximately 1599 in England, at a time when the end of the 40-year reign of Queen Elizabeth I was imminent and her failure to appoint a successor raised the very real threat of Civil War.”

- Okay so you think it’s miscast. That’s fine… but no-one is impressed by your use of Wikipedia here. I’m still waiting for your History of England and Her Literature essay to turn into an actual review.

“Shakespeare was not unaware of the havoc that puffed-up military commanders could wreak when they decided to seize power from civilian authorities. The assassins of Roman general and politician Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) claimed that he had ambition to burn and was about to make himself king and do away with the cherished Roman Republic (509-27 BC), which was run by the Senate.”

– Okay, more Wikipedia filling. I guess I’ll have to wait another paragraph for your review to begin then. Thank you for the copy and pasted dates of births and deaths, we love that in a theatrical review. They really are very relevant.

“Moreover, at the end of Act I, when the Ides of March 44 BC has come, and these self-appointed “patriots” carve up Caesar — in an unnecessarily graphic manner, with blood bags spurting and splashing the stage with crimson — JTP transforms Julius Caesar from a Grade A drama of political intrigue into a Grade Z slasher film.”

– Frankly, this is ridiculous. When someone gets stabbed, there’s a lot of blood. Historical texts for the time of JC suggest he was stabbed 23 times. Don’t know if you realise, but that means there is going to be a lot of blood. In Elizabethan times (which you seem so interested in) the productions used copious amounts of blood, mainly pigs blood. There was literally buckets of the stuff backstage and it had to be fresh enough to not congeal. Comparing a realistic blood representation of a stabbing within a Shakespeare play to a “Grade Z slasher film” is infantile and petty.

“Cassius (the miscast Jeremy Fiebig, who may have had that “lean and hungry look” about 40 to 50 lbs. ago, but now more resembles yours truly than Cassius)”

— Wow, Robert. Did you really just go there? I bet when you wrote that you thought you were being really funny with that bitchy little comment. Last time I looked, fatism wasn’t exactly a plus point for a theatre reviewer. Also, you’re little gibe shows just how little you know about Shakespeare. That line continues “He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous” meaning that Cassius has a look of someone who is not looking after himself and may be a plotter. You were probably too busy being fixated on the actors appearance to fully understand the meaning behind this line. And if you did understand it, shame on you for such a hit below the waist.

“and Marcus Brutus (an ineffectual Brian Fisher, who never says or does anything in this JTP production to justify Marc Antony’s surprising end-of-play characterization of Brutus as “the noblest Roman of them all”).”

—- Ew. Just because a character thinks something of another character, doesn’t mean that it’s true. This is plain lazy. I can’t be bothered to get into a debate about the varied interpretation of whether or not Brutus is a noble Roman or not, because there’s a case for both sides here and it depends on the interpretation of the actor and the production. I’ve seen many productions where I wasn’t convinced of Brutus being noble…or of him not being noble. Your comment is too simplistic to be fair, and suggests you’d rather blame an actor than think for yourself.

“Director David Henderson’s misguided decision to transform Caesar’s barren third wife Calpurnia into a smoking-hot babe flashing smoldering come-hither looks at the general’s associates is another misstep, although Katie Anderson sizzles in that role.”

— What is it about the use of “smoking-hot babe” here that made me uncomfortable reading this? And the use of “sizzles”. It honestly sounds a bit creepy.

“The saddest thing about the current Justice Theater Project presentation of Julius Caesar is that newbies to the works of celebrated Elizabethan poet and playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) will wonder what all the fuss is about.”

—- The saddest thing about this review is that you don’t consider yourself to be a “newbie”. Thank you again for letting us know Shakespeare’s birth and death years. Maybe you could have provided the actual dates (26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) for full irrelevant effect, you know Wikipedia has it right there.

“I hope that in the words of the Broadway musical Kiss Me, Kate, JTP brushes up their Shakespeare before tackling one of the Bard’s plays in a future season.”

—- Yeah, you’re right. You really should stick to musicals.

You discuss a lot of people in this review.

Have you no sense of irony? Are you capable of evaluating a show on the value of its production choices rather than on the values you want to ascribe to it?

Get out of the business. Hurry.

Timmy Robinson’s best friend in the whole wide world is a six-foot tall rotting zombie named Fido. But when FIDO eats the next-door neighbor, Mom and Dad hit the roof